The Unstoppable Decline of the Leon Mining Basins: Some Thoughts on the Concept of Development

Abstract

Industrial mutation causes major transformation in the fact of Territory. Thus no geographical space can
escape from suffering the consequences of technological change, the appearance on the scene of more efficient
producers or a simple de-localization of productive units. However, the capacity to confront these difficulties
is not a common one given that it is here said to peak in backward territories that depend almost exclusively
on a twilight industry of the sort that is usually little or in no way adapted to the dismantling of its productive
structures.
The paper summarizes the conceptual framework that the author, after several years dedicated to the study
of the coalfields in Leon, considers the most appropriate to any analysis of the phenomenon of the agony and
the fall of territories characterized by a scant degree of development and an over-dependence upon an
industry no longer viable. Such is the case of many Spanish mining areas that, had in all too many cases,
no other support save coal for their development for over a century. The model insists upon the relevance
of those territorial transformations brought on by such traditional industries, and most especially their
effect upon the very institutional framework itself and the way the population will react when faced with a
crisis of the sort described. Further to all this, the paper urges a call to undertake immediate alternative
development for these territories so that the contrast between them and other more dynamic ones might not
become ever the more marked.